before long after the popularization of photography in the mid - 19th century , people take up experimenting with gimmicks like microphotography . There was a abbreviated but huge craze for these tiny images that could only be seen using a special microscope lens of the eye . It was perfect for deal pornography in a repressive age .
Above , a microphotograph ( existent size ) on the left . On the right , the image is magnified .
Overat Collectors Weekly , Hunter Oatman - Stanford has a fantastic story about the history of microphotographs . begin in the 1830s , photographers produce these microphotographs by coating spyglass laboratory slides with the proper chemicals and exposing them to images that had been shrunk down so much they could only be take in under a microscope . Indeed , the first microphotograph was produced by a microscope Divine , and many of the earliest example of the cast came from hoi polloi who were experiment — or making them for very affluent node .
But the French lensman René Dagron wanted to come up with a way to sell them to the mass . The honest way to do it , he decided , would be to reckon out how to conflate a magnifying crystalline lens with the photograph , somehow . That direction , the figure could be positioned in a cunning path on a common equipment , creating a secret pic .
Oatman - Stanford writes :
Dagron spent nearly a twelvemonth secluded in his shop , perfect a lense that would do just that . He settled on a miniature version of a magnifying gadget invented 50 years prior by Charles , Third Earl Stanhope , who gave these lilliputian lens system their name . In 1859 , Dagron was grant the worldly concern ’s first microfilm patent for his newfangled equipment , but the following year , he simplified the innovation to make the most common shape of Stanhope . One end of a small glass piston chamber was bray into a convex form , and on the opposite close , a midget , translucent picture ( cut from a glass slide ) was secure with Canada balsam , a gum made from the resin of a balsam fir tree . When held to the light and regard from the farseeing side , the microphotograph was seeable to the naked eye .
you could imagine why this would have been immediately popular for titillating photographs . A secret pic of a naked person hidden among your manlike hunting equipment , or smoke gear ? unadulterated for the priggish Isle of Man who loves gadgets .
And indeed , it was . Oatman - Stanford describes how the famous Kinsey Institute for sex enquiry number to have a collection of Stanhope pornography :
One of the largest solicitation of erotic Stanhope lens is house at theKinsey Institutein Bloomington , Indiana . [ Stanhope accumulator Howard ] Melnick has worked nearly with the Kinsey appeal — donating Stanhope objects , renovate lenses , and ready item for display . Most of their Stanhope archive was made up of open lenses never put in into objects . These Stanhopes arrived as a single contribution in the twenties , when they were confiscated in the mail as erotica presumably on their way from a lens manufacturing business to a client making novelty items . “ There were one thousand , with 30 - some different image , ” Melnick allege . “ Some are actress with apparel on , but mostly they ’re stylized nudes doing pose amid weird airscrew or things like that . ” flux their small size of it and secretive placement , Stanhopes were perfect for cover erotic imagery in unornamented sight .
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